The All-Star rosters will never be perfect, not with the nebulous criteria involved in determining who belongs. Yet every year there are a few outright clunkers on the rosters, usually resulting in some great players getting snubbed because they didn't do enough in April and May to satisfy the voters -- fans or players. Sometimes it's excessive fealty to old, outdated stats like saves or batting average; sometimes it's the rule that every team has to have one representative; sometimes it's just inexplicable nonsense.
Here are the five biggest mistakes that I saw on this year's rosters, looking at who was included and who should have been in those spots instead. Bear in mind that I believe the All-Star Game is about more than just performance in the first 60 or so games of the present season. This is a big marketing event, and the point is to have all the stars on the field at the same time on one national television broadcast. Missing some of the players I mention below is a big lost opportunity for the sport.
DJ LeMahieu over Kris Bryant
I don't think any stupidity found in this year's selections can top an NL All-Star roster without reigning NL MVP Kris Bryant, who happens to be among the most recognizable stars in the game and is in the midst of another All-Star-worthy season. His exclusion seems to defy any rational definition of All-Star. If you don't have one of the game's best players, who also happens to be one of its biggest stars, why even bother to have the game?
The worst player on either roster by 2017 performance is DJ LeMahieu, whose selection must be a player overreaction to his fluky 2016 year -- the only year he's sniffed double-digit homers or an OBP over .360. He's an average regular, maybe, who had one outlier season. His selection meant the commissioner's office had to add Josh Harrison to get the Pirates a representative (and to put a utility man on the roster), so the last infield spot couldn't go to Bryant or Anthony Rendon.
If the players had voted Harrison into the game over LeMahieu, the commissioner's office also could have put Yangervis Solarte in as the token Padre; no San Diego player has a WAR over 1.1, with Solarte at 1.0, and while Wil Myers is their best candidate based on track record, the NL roster already has three first basemen, all deserving.
Jake Lamb over Anthony Rendon
This is a continuation of the first problem, because while Lamb is having a very good season, he is no better than the fourth-best third baseman in the National League. Nolen Arenado is the starter, which is fine since he is an elite defender and is at least in the top echelon at the hot corner -- even if he's clearly not No. 1. But Bryant is also better than Lamb no matter the time period, and Rendon is having the best year of any NL third baseman, in line with his 6-plus WAR 2014 season. Maybe in a worse year, Lamb would belong. But you can't argue for him ahead of Arenado, Bryant or Rendon, even if you're just looking at value in 2017 alone.
The reliever selections are always the worst of any All-Star Game if we're looking at any measure of total player value (that is not saves). Brad Hand is here as the token Padre, with his 0.8 WAR, because the rules say we have to have someone from every team. Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood is the best-performing NL pitcher this year who's not on the roster. If he had enough innings to qualify -- he's about 10 innings short -- he'd lead the league in ERA, and as it is, he's in the top 10 in WAR by both Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs. Chase Anderson had a pretty good case for inclusion here, either in Hand's spot or over Corey Knebel as the token Brewer, but Anderson is out at least a month with an oblique injury.
Ervin Santana over Chris Archer
The AL pitching staff has the right structure for an All-Star roster: It's mostly starters, so we're getting the best-performing, most valuable pitchers in the league in the game. At least, that's the idea. But then there is Ervin Santana, whose 3.06 ERA is almost entirely the result of a fluky low BABIP rather than his performance, especially since he's just as homer-prone as ever. The players voted him in based on his ERA, I presume, since nothing else about his stat line indicates he's even a league-average starter. The biggest omission among AL hurlers is probably Chris Archer, who is second in the AL in strikeouts and is probably a bit unlucky in the BABIP and ERA columns, but not enough to just hand-wave them away. He's certainly more deserving than Santana -- Archer is striking out more guys, walking fewer and giving up fewer homers, and he is one of the few pitchers in the game whom the average fan might turn on the TV just to watch pitch. Carlos Carrasco would also have been a solid choice, but Archer has more star power.
Justin Smoak and Yonder Alonso over Miguel Cabrera
Yes, Miguel Cabrera, one of the best right-handed hitters in the history of the game, and a guy who could quit tomorrow in disgust over his omission from the AL roster and still sail into the Hall of Fame, is having a bad year -- not just by his standards, but overall, with 0.5 WAR thanks to below-average defense and the high replacement level at first base. This isn't some argument to put Mister Faded Glory into the All-Star Game, though -- Miggy is coming off a 4.9 WAR season in 2016 when he hit .316/.393/.563 with 38 homers, finishing in the top five in all three rate stats and eighth in the league in homers. He's an inner-circle All-Star, and less than a half-season of subpar performance is not a sufficient reason to keep him out of the game. Smoak and Alonso are great stories, both first-round picks from 2008 whose careers were disappointments until they both broke out in the first half this year. But neither one of them belongs ahead of a guy whose .559 career slugging percentage puts him in the top 20 all time.
Recency bias is so last century, guys. If you can't find room on these gigantic rosters for the NL MVP who's having a great follow-up season and for a surefire Hall of Famer who's off to a rough start, then you aren't making a serious effort to get fans to watch the game.